New Washington Fraud

September 19, 1986|By Blue

It's folly for Congress to comply with the Gramm-Rudman deficit targets in a way likely to destroy the targets one year later. Yet that describes the tentative compromise that House and Senate negotiators reached Thursday night. The package uses what lawmakers call ''cats and dogs'' -- a mix of one- shot revenue raisers and pure gimmicks. The problem is not just that the package will have less impact than lawmakers claim. By flinching at long-term cutbacks in spending and increases in revenue, Congress makes it all the harder to hit the 1988 deficit target of $108 billion.

This shortsightedness was symbolized by the Reagan administration's push to take the one-year, $11 billion increase in revenue that tax reform will produce next year and count it toward meeting the $154 billion maximum for the deficit that's allowed under Gramm-Rudman. This would be ludicrous because over the next five years tax reform will have no net impact plus or minus on the Treasury.

In fact, lawmakers shouldn't even be depending on the $10 billion by which the law allows them to miss next year's deficit target of $144 billion. Faced with fresh estimates that the deficit will be about $24 billion higher than that, they should bridge that entire gap with new spending cuts and selective tax increases.

Some House Democrats have pushed a sensible strategy for reaching the limit: taxing gasoline by an additional 10 cents a gallon and raising other excise taxes. But they didn't want to let Mr. Reagan veto it and campaign against Democrats as big taxers.

And on spending, the House's work is nothing to write home about. Because the chamber has failed to pass a single spending bill for the budget year that starts Oct. 1, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a $570 billion grab bag for government programs across the board. The committee even tossed more than $3 billion to revenue sharing, despite that program's status in the budget as the only major program that Congress has promised to end. That's absurd.

The House's nearsightedness on spending equals Mr. Reagan's on taxes. Given their political touchiness, both sides need to strike a deal combining spending cuts and taxes. Instead, the package Thursday night ignores the need for new revenue except when it pretends that better enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service can bring in billions.

Right now, lawmakers are antsy to adjourn by Oct. 3 -- and edgy about reducing programs or raising taxes so soon before Election Day. So they want to commit their old off-putting trick: putting off tough decisions until next year, a time that never arrives.